When the phone rang on a quiet Tuesday morning, Teresa Puthussery was sipping her coffee at home in California. Assuming it was spam, she ignored the call — even after several persistent rings. It wasn’t until the caller began describing her research in intricate detail that the UC Berkeley neurobiologist realized this was no prank.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the country, Nabarun Dasgupta was attending a ceremony honoring his late colleague and activist Louise Vincent when his own life-changing call came through.
On October 8, 2025, the MacArthur Foundation announced its newest class of fellows — 22 recipients recognized for their extraordinary creativity and impact. Among them were Puthussery and Dasgupta, two Indian American researchers working in vastly different domains — vision science and addiction research. Each will receive an $800,000 unrestricted grant, often called the “Genius Grant.”
Teresa Puthussery: Illuminating the Invisible
An associate professor at UC Berkeley’s Herbert Wertheim School of Optometry & Vision Science, Teresa Puthussery is a neurobiologist and optometrist unraveling the mysteries of how our eyes communicate with our brains.
Her journey began far from any lab — in Warragul, a small rural town outside Melbourne, Australia. Raised by two teachers — her mother taught math, her father science — Puthussery’s early fascination with biology began in her dad’s classroom. “There were lots of interesting specimens, microscopes, and fun things to play with,” she recalled. “His curiosity and passion for science rubbed off on me.”
From Clinic to Research
Puthussery started her career as a clinical optometrist, but a single patient encounter changed everything.
A young man in his early twenties with retinitis pigmentosa — an inherited blinding disease — came to her clinic. “I thought, ‘How can we have people my age progressively losing their vision and there’s nothing anyone can do about it?’” she said. That moment set her on a new path: a Ph.D. in vision research and a lifelong commitment to understanding and treating blindness.
A Groundbreaking Discovery in Retinal Science
Puthussery made a landmark discovery by identifying direction-selective ganglion cells (DSGCs) in the primate retina.
These cells allow our eyes to detect motion and keep our gaze stable — a critical visual function. For decades, scientists believed DSGCs were only present in rabbits and that primate motion detection happened in the brain, not the retina. Puthussery’s work overturned that assumption, combining genetic, electrophysiological, and imaging technologies to reveal these cells in primates for the first time.
Her lab has since discovered a rare type of ganglion cell that functions like a gimbal on a camera, stabilizing our visual field. These findings have major implications for understanding vision and treating eye diseases.
A Moonshot for Restoring Vision
Today, Puthussery collaborates with researchers at the University of Rochester and the University of Wisconsin–Madison on a “moonshot” project: growing new photoreceptors from stem cells and transplanting them into damaged retinas to restore vision.
“Twenty years ago, many of the discoveries we’ve made as a field, and even the methods we use in my lab, would have seemed like science fiction,” she said.
Puthussery earned her BS (2000), PhD (2005), and a postgraduate degree (2006) from the University of Melbourne, followed by postdoctoral research at Oregon Health & Science University before joining Berkeley.
Nabarun Dasgupta: The Street Scientist
While Puthussery studies the retina, Nabarun Dasgupta looks at something far less microscopic but equally urgent — America’s overdose crisis.
A researcher at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Dasgupta is known for his relentless analysis of drug overdose data. In 2024, he was among the first to detect an unprecedented decline in fatal overdoses across the country. “I was going through reports state by state, and all the graphs pointed downwards,” he told NPR.
Dasgupta is an Innovation Fellow at UNC’s Gillings School of Global Public Health and a senior scientist at the UNC Injury Prevention Research Center. He also leads the UNC Street Drug Analysis Lab, which tests community-donated drug samples to reveal their contents and makes the data publicly accessible. The lab has completed over 16,000 analyses, offering communities and health professionals vital, real-time information.
Saving Lives Through Science and Action
In 2020, Dasgupta co-founded Remedy Alliance / For The People, a nonprofit dedicated to distributing free and low-cost naloxone to harm reduction programs nationwide. Working with the FDA, his team restructured licensing agreements to allow direct purchases from pharmaceutical companies. To date, they have supplied over 500 organizations and distributed more than 6 million doses of the life-saving drug.
Maya Doe-Simkins, the organization’s co-director, said, “The work that Nab is involved with definitely saves lives, to the tune of tens of thousands of people.”
Dasgupta earned his AB (2001) from Princeton, MPH (2003) from Yale, and PhD (2013) from UNC.
Parallel Paths to Impact
Though their scientific focus could not be more different, Puthussery and Dasgupta share a common philosophy: research must connect to real-world needs.
Puthussery believes understanding the retina’s fundamental mechanisms will lead to better diagnostic tools and therapies for vision loss.
Dasgupta’s work is equally pragmatic: “Our mission is science in service. We want people to have access to the best knowledge and tools, so they can make better decisions about what they put in their bodies.”
Both scientists credit collaboration and community as central to their success — bridging the lab and the street, the microscopic and the societal.
Indian American Excellence
UC Berkeley Chancellor Rich Lyons praised Puthussery’s achievement:
“Dr. Puthussery’s work embodies the spirit of discovery and innovation that is at the core of Berkeley’s research mission and showcases how the work we do here has a transformative impact on human health and well-being.”
Dasgupta becomes Carolina’s third MacArthur Fellow, joining Tressie McMillan Cottom (2020) and Kevin M. Guskiewicz (2011).
A Brilliant Future
The MacArthur Fellowship is often seen as a recognition of potential, not just past accomplishments. For Teresa Puthussery and Nabarun Dasgupta, this recognition affirms two truths:
- Innovation happens in many forms — from the precision of retinal cells to the gritty reality of overdose data.
- Science has the power to change lives when it stays connected to people.
As they continue their work, these two Indian American “geniuses” remind us that great science is not only about discovery — it’s about impact.
Source: Americankahani
